Stormont-Vail HealthCare will open a new surgery and therapy center in the second half of 2015.

Officials from Stormont-Vail led a ceremonial groundbreaking Tuesday afternoon at 2601 S.W. East Circle Drive North, which is a spot the health system had purchased from Topeka Unified School District 501’s Kanza Education and Science Park near Interstate 70 and S.W. MacVicar. The plans are for a three-story, 87,657-square-foot building, at a cost of about $20 million.

Randy Peterson, president and CEO of Stormont-Vail, said the orthopedic surgery and single-day surgery departments will be on the first floor. Physical, occupational and speech therapy will be on the second floor, and doctors and mid-level providers will have offices on the top floor. The building also will include two X-ray rooms.

Kent Palmberg, chief medical officer for Stormont-Vail, said the promise of a new building helped with recruiting an orthopedic traumatalogist, who specializes in bone injuries from vehicle accidents and similar causes, and will help recruit others. Bringing her in will allow the other eight orthopedic surgeons to focus more on non-trauma patients, he said.

“Having a beautiful building really does help recruitment,” he said. “Every town in America needs orthopedic surgeons, and we’re competing with these big towns.”

Patients also will benefit from having the therapy departments under one roof because they won’t have to drive around to different appointments, Palmberg said. It also will help the system to avoid duplicating offerings, he said.

The building was designed to make access as easy as possible for people with difficulty moving, Palmberg said. Both the first and second floors will have ground level parking because of the slope of the hill, so patients can pull up to whichever side they need and walk in, he said.

“This facility is going to be state-of-the-art, modern,” he said.

Murray Co. is the general contractor, Peterson said, and all subcontractors hired so far have been local.

Julie Ford, superintendent of USD 501, was present at the groundbreaking.

She said the district and Stormont-Vail already have arrangements to let students rotate through different departments and work together on a nurse’s aide program for high school students, and the health system gives scholarships to students going into nursing.

The new center will be a convenient place for them to learn about medical careers, she said.

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Gee, I didn't realize you had to recruit patients for surgery and therapy,
AND at a cost of about $20 million!
So if I need either one, I'm going to be sure to stay awake
during the procedure, just so I can enjoy the beautiful, but costly, building!

Great medical facility for the city of Topeka and surrounding areas. This will benefit the community as it will attract more and better orthopedic surgeons to our area. Commendable partnership for USD 501 students!

Kansas Orthopedics has the absolute worst access for an orthopedics facility. To get in, there's a steep incline that is very hard to access in a wheelchair, which a lot of orthopedics patients are after surgery. The lower entry, where physical therapy is located, has limited parking and is always full with PT patients, so you can't park there and use the elevator up to the main floor. Glad to see this building under construction!